Disclaimer: We may earn affiliate commissions if you decide to purchase through our link. Learn more.

7 Best VPN Services for 2019

There are a ton of VPNs in the industry ranging anywhere between $15/month to as low as $1.99/month, but which is the best? Based on my testing, ExpressVPN is the best VPN for 2019, followed by PureVPN, Surfshark, NordVPN, CyberGhost, VyperVPN, & Perfect Privacy.

If we talk about speeds, ExpressVPN performed exceptionally well thanks to its 3000+ server park. It managed to achieve about 80.2 download and 84.11 Mbps upload speeds for both torrenting and Netflix streaming.

Not only that, ExpressVPN managed to deliver raw performance without leaking my IP, DNS, or WebRTC.

Another reason why ExpressVPN managed to be my top pick is because of its features. Speaking of which, 256-bit AES encryption, OpenVPN, Zero-knowledge DNS, Kill switch, and VPN split tunneling are all present in ExpressVPN.

Last but not least, ExpressVPN boasts a world-class 24/7 customer support and can be used on 5 devices simultaneously which a lot of VPN users can appreciate.

Based on its features and overall performance, there’s no doubt in my mind that ExpressVPN is probably the best VPN service for you.

Things that can be improved:

Significantly more expensive than other competing VPN services

Browser extension doesn’t work without installing the desktop client

Interested to know more about this VPN provider, check out our exclusive ExpressVPN review.

CyberGhost is a Romanian VPN service with around 15-years of cybersecurity experience. The service is super affordable and only costs $2.75/month price tag.

Another reason to love CyberGhost is their super-generous 45-day money-back guarantee.

Coming down to CyberGhost’s privacy policy and it is truly flawless. Not only do they have a strict no-logs policy, but they’re also based in Romania which doesn’t have any mandatory data retentions laws.

As far as speeds are concerned, CyberGhost’s performance is just about decent. Although not as great as ExpressVPN, I still managed to squeeze about 25.4Mbps download and 32.2Mbps upload speed on my 100Mbps connection.

Despite being flawless in the security department, VyprVPN is not all that great when it comes to speeds. To be blatantly honest, my overall speeds fluctuated by over 50%.

Moving on to features and VyprVPN is a class apart. Excellent leak protection, industry-standard 256-bit military-grade encryption, OpenVPN are all supported.

Not only that, VyprVPN even offers a unique Chameleon protocol, a handy Kill switch, Nat firewall protection, and VyprVPN cloud feature to help you can establish a stable VPN connection between local networks and VyprVPN servers.

And who can forget about VyprVPN offers exceptionally well customer support? Their live chat support is super-fast and usually takes a few minutes to resolve any issue.

Things that can be improved:

Doesn’t have support for anonymous payments

Email support isn’t all that snappy

Curious to know more about VyprVPN, why not check out our exclusive VyprVPN review.

Finally, after filtering out the VPNs that meet my review criteria, I’ll suggest you the top 5 VPNs of 2019.

Sounds good? Let’s dive into the review process.

Jurisdiction

Jurisdiction can either be a deal maker or a breaker. When it comes to choosing a truly secure anonymous VPN, experts would suggest that you skip VPNs based in 5 Eyes, 9 Eyes, or 14 Eyes countries.

If you don’t want to go through the entire list, you can use the handy tool below to quickly find out if your VPN falls under a safe jurisdiction.

Since countries with strict data retention laws are obligated by law to comply with law enforcement agencies, any personally identifiable information is at risk of being investigated indiscriminately.

VPN providers operating under the nose of the surveillance alliances don’t have any choice but to comply quietly.

We have seen one too many providers being forced by law enforcement agencies to give up confidential and personally identifiable information of its users.

For instance back in 2011, a member of a hacker group LulzSec was sentenced to 15 years in prison after HideMyAss handed over the logs of the alleged hacked to the law enforcement agency following court orders.

Similarly, PureVPN also had to cooperate with the FBI in the infamous cyberstalking case which led to the arrest of a 24-year-old sick individual by the name of Ryan Lin.

Based on such past cases, I spent 96 hours digging into the jurisdictions of around 123 VPN providers to see which VPNs are safe.

Anyways, after filtering out 100+ VPNs, here are few of my recommended VPNs that don’t operate under the jurisdiction of the FVEY:

ExpressVPN

NordVPN

CyberGhost

Surfshark

Astrill

Avast Secure line

PureVPN

Another reason for choosing these VPNs is because they are fully GDPR compliant.

NordVPN

PureVPN

PureVPN is also a safe choice for a VPN since it operates from the jurisdiction of Hong Kong. PureVPN is fully compliant with current GDPR laws.

Surfshark

Surfshark is headquartered in the British Virgin Islands, which is free from data retention laws. Surfshark is also GDPR compliant.

ExpressVPN

Same as Surfshark, ExpressVPN is also headquartered in the British Virgin Islands and fully GDPR compliant.

Astrill

As far as jurisdiction is concerned, Astrill operates from Seychelles and doesn’t fall under the jurisdiction of surveillance alliances. Astrill is also fully GDPR compliant and inspires trust in their service.

CyberGhost

CyberGhost is based in Romania and doesn’t abide by mandatory data retention laws. It also fully operates in compliance with the EU’s GDPR guidelines.

Logging Policy

“No logs”- sounds great right? But I’m willing to bet you’ve never even gone through your VPN provider’s privacy policy.

Don’t feel bad though, you’re not the only one. Most VPN consumers fall for swift marketing gimmicks. Twist of words is what lures people in.

The truth of the matter is, there’s no such thing as a completely log-less VPN. I know this for a fact as I deconstructed the logging policies of over 100 VPN providers and found that most VPNs do keep some sort of logs.

Whether it’s just usage logs or connection logs, VPN providers can’t operate without them. However, you as a VPN consumer should only worry about usage logs. As long as your VPN provider doesn’t keep records of your online activities, you have nothing to worry about.

Since I don’t feel like cramming this article with too many VPNs, I’ve comprised a shortlist of VPNs that either does or doesn’t keep logs.

VPN provider

Connection logs

Usage Logs

NordVPN

No

No

Surfshark

No

No

ExpressVPN

No

No

IPVanish

No

No

ZoogVPN

No

No

AceVPN

No

No

Betternet VPN

No

No

Ivacy

No

No

IBVPN

No

No

IVPN

No

No

Cactus VPN

No

No

TunnelBear

No

No

Flow VPN

Yes

Yes

FlyVPN

Yes

Yes

HolaVPN

Yes

Yes

TigerVPN

Yes

Yes

Unlocator

Yes

Yes

Leak Test

DNS and IP address is what uniquely identifies a web user. Think of it like your home address. In the world of VPNs, It’s the fine line between you and your privacy.

Sadly, a lot of the VPNs currently available on the market are plagued with DNS, IP and WebRTC leaks. In fact, according to one study, out of 150 VPNs tested on the Google Play Store, 25% were found leaking DNS.

Obfuscation – Special Feature for Bypassing Impenetrable Firewalls

While you might have seen advertisements claiming to “unblock everything and anything” on the web, in most cases, it is not true.

You see, some countries use powerful firewalls to block certain content. For instance, China enforces the Great Firewall to restrict all foreign content and actively block VPN services.

Other countries also either block VPNs or have deemed them illegal to use in their respective countries. Breaking the rule can not only get you fined but in some countries, you might even face jail time and legal prosecution.

This technology is super effective in countries like China and in many parts of the Middle East where access to foreign content is heavily sanctioned. For instance, if you want to watch Netflix in China, using an obfuscated server can help you bypass the Great Firewall of China (GFW).

But before you get too excited about using obfuscated servers, not many VPN providers support this technology. In fact, after conducting in-depth research of the VPN industry, I’ve managed to find only four paid VPNs that offer obfuscated servers:

VyprVPN

IPVanish

ExpressVPN

NordVPN

Server Coverage & Types of Servers

Servers are the heart and soul of any VPN service. Choosing a VPN server can make a night and day difference in performance.

In addition to that, the more servers a VPN provider offers, the better it is in terms of overall performance.

However, one thing almost no VPN consumer pays attention to is the type of servers being offered by a VPN provider. I’m talking about virtual and physical servers.

Even though you’d see thousands of servers being advertised by VPN providers, in reality, most of them use a combination of both virtual and physical servers.

Sadly though, very few VPN providers like ExpressVPN and PureVPN openly admit to using a combination of virtual and physical servers.

Even VPN providers that claim only to use physical servers aren’t always true to their words. I found out about this when I tested Surfshark’s Indian and Vietnamese servers.

As a general rule of thumb, best VPN servers are always physical.

So which providers truly offer bare metal servers, and therefore are the safest VPNs?

Well except for NordVPN, CyberGhost, and IPVanish, I haven’t come across a VPN that offers physical servers only.

If you’re curious as to how I tested virtual and physical VPN server, you can check out my virtual servers guide.

Transparency

When it comes to VPN transparency, not knowing who’s behind the company can be quite detrimental to your privacy.

Simple Linkedin profiles can tell a lot about a company you’re dealing with. For instance, VPN providers like CyberGhost and NordVPN among others have completely transparent company Linkedin profiles.

Company address, names of employees and even the names of CEOs and Co-founders is out in the public for everyone to see.

In addition to that, transparency reports are crucial to know what sort of data has been shared with law enforcement agencies – if any.

Things like company address, real names of employees and owners, do make any business a lot more trustworthy.

Despite obvious perks, most VPN providers don’t choose to disclose a lot of information. For instance, when I asked IbVPN about their company owners, they simply answered my question by saying this:

“SC Amplusnet SRL is the company that holds full ownership of ibVPN. The company owners are private persons that are involved in developing and maintaining the ibVPN service”.

They obviously didn’t want to disclose who’s running the company. This is exactly why I decided to reach out to more VPN providers.

Streaming (Netflix, Hulu, Kodi…)

If I say Netflix is the world’s most popular streaming platform, I wouldn’t be wrong, would I? In all honesty, Netflix is no short of a holy grail for streaming fanatics.

Despite being super popular, it is not available in some countries. And even in countries where Netflix is available, there is always the issue of the limited content library due to regional licensing.

However, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Netflix is using powerful algorithms to block VPN services.

While it was possible to unblock Netflix with any old VPN, from today’s VPN service comparison, all you get is a proxy error message.

In addition to Netflix, there are other streaming platforms like BBC iPlayer, Hulu, and Amazon that are also heavily geo-restricted.

I’ve personally tested the above-mentioned best VPN on the market with a variety of streaming services and found them all to work flawlessly.

Torrenting

Torrenting and streaming are the number one reasons why people even choose VPNs. However, many VPN providers don’t allow torrenting. Even VPNs that work with torrenting, only allow torrenting on limited servers.

Tested VPN’s

For a quick overview of VPN speeds, jurisdictions, logs, leaks, GDPR compliance, and transparency reports, you can refer to the VPN chart below.

What about FREE VPNs, Are They Any Good?

Generally speaking, yes! In fact, there are plenty of reliable free VPNs out there you can rely on. That said, while free public VPNs are good for general day to day browsing, they offer limited features.

For instance, free VPNs only offer limited bandwidth and servers. This obviously doesn’t sound like a big deal, however, considering you won’t be able to unblock Netflix, you are going to be seriously missing out.

If you’re the kind of person who likes to stream a lot or play online games, you’ll need a good VPN with unlimited data and top-notch security.

Free VPNs might not do the trick for you. If your VPN usage is extensive, you’d be better off with purchasing VPNs that offer premium subscriptions.

Factors To Consider When Choosing The Best VPN

Other than what I’ve already discussed above, there are a few best VPN options you should look at in any VPN solutions for the home. Primarily you should focus on price, refund policies, app compatibility and more.

Price

No matter how good a VPN service might be, if it’s not affordably priced, it wouldn’t appeal to an average consumer. Whenever you decide to buy a VPN service, you have to admit, price plays a major role.

Refund Policy

Refund policies are like the “Get out of jail free cards” of the VPN industry. You get the freedom to walk away from a lengthy subscription plan without risking anything. It makes sense right? Why would you want to continue using a service if you’re not satisfied with it?

Generally, VPN providers offer at least a 30- day refund guarantee.

Simultaneous Connection

Being able to secure multiple devices with just one subscription plan is absolute bliss. You get the freedom to either have all the privacy to yourself or split the bill with a friend or two.

Best VPN suggested by Reddit

Aside from the VPNs I’ve discussed above, some folks over at Reddit have pretty good things to say about Mullvad, Windscribe and proton VPN. But personally speaking, I don’t really recommend these services.

FAQs

Short for Virtual Private Network, a VPN is an amazing technology that’s capable of establishing a secure encrypted connection between your computer and the VPN server. VPNs can be categorized into types, remote access VPN and site-to-site VPNs.

Instead of you accessing websites and services with your original IP, a VPN server does it for you. Your true identity is never exposed and all of the network traffic gets end-to-end encrypted.

This is of course only the jest of VPNs, there are countless benefits of using a VPN. If you’re new to the world of VPNs, I highly suggest you check out our in-depth guide on what is a VPN.

Yes! VPNs are 100% legal to use. As long as you’re not using it for any illegal activities, you have nothing to worry about.

However, in some countries, you are only permitted to use official or state-approved VPNs. For instance, in countries like China, UAE, Iraq, North Korea, and Russia, only state-approved VPNs can be used.

Violation of the law can obviously result in fines and even imprisonment in some cases. Just for your reference, in Russia, unauthorized VPN usage can result in fines ranging anywhere between 300,000 RUB to 700,000 RUB.

Yes, it is. As long as your device is supported by your VPN provider, you should have no issues. Generally speaking, VPN providers offer dedicated apps for a whole range of devices and platforms.

However, if your specific device is not supported, there is always an option to manually configure a VPN directly on your home router.

If you’re curious about how it works, I highly suggest you check out one of our router setup guides. For gaming consoles like PS4, you would either have to rely on manual setup, as there are no native VPN apps available for gaming consoles.

That said, In the case of smart TVs, there’s almost always an independent app available, which is great if you’re not too great with manual configurations.

However, in case your provider doesn’t offer a standalone VPN app for your smart TV, you can always rely on manual configurations. Here’s a super simple setup guide to get you started.

In all honesty, yes, a VPN is going to slow down your internet a bit. However, not by a lot. With strong overhead encryption, your internet performance will surely suffer.

With premium VPNs, you are going to experience a speed drop of around 25 to 30 percent. To ensure you’re not stuck with a sluggish VPN, It is absolutely crucial to perform speed tests while you’re covered under the refund period.

If you’re curious about numbers, you might want to check out our in-depth VPN speed test guide where we have compiled test results of over 10 mainstream VPN services.

A mobile VPN is an optimized version of traditional VPN apps that are designed to run on smartphones and tablets. Mobile VPNs are lightweight and are compatible with both iOS and Android operating systems.

Traditionally, VPNs have always been used on laptops and desktop computers. However, as everything is moving towards mobile, VPN providers are offering highly optimized and snappy VPN apps for smartphones.

In fact, according to the global web index, VPN usage on mobile phones is not too far behind desktops. According to stats, while desktop VPN usage is around 20%, mobile VPN usage on mobile phones is at 19%.

Part of the reason why mobile VPN usage has become so popular has to do with ease of use. Mobile VPNs are not only better optimized but also offer a seamless user experience.

Nowadays, mobile VPNs apps are surprisingly lightweight, less power-hungry and generally pretty formidable on your battery life and memory.

Since we’re constantly moving around and hooked to our phones, it makes all the sense in the world to secure our online footprint with a VPN.

Anyone who’s connected to the internet and is privacy-conscious should consider using a VPN. No matter what device you use, be it mobile or desktop, encrypting and anonymizing your online activity can ensure your privacy is never compromised.

Scams like Identity theft, Nigerian scam, and lottery scam are infamous for stealing confidential data and rob people off of their hard-earned money.

Aside from that, government surveillance programs and legislation like the snooper’s charter allow law enforcement agencies to spy on all your online activities.

Bottom line, if you’re least bothered about your privacy and don’t want to fall victim to online scams, it’s better to stay safe and anonymous on the internet.